The economics and politics of instability, empire, and energy, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, plus other random blather and my wonderful wonderful wife. And I’d like a cigar right now.

August 26, 2016

Fact of the day: Maine drug arrests

It appears that Governor LePage has gone off the deep end. Among other things, he said this:

“Let me tell you this, explain to you, I made the comment that black people are trafficking in our state, now ever since I said that comment I’ve been collecting every single drug dealer who has been arrested in our state. ... I don’t ask them to come to Maine and sell their poison, but they come and I will tell you that 90-plus percent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ring binder, are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut, the Bronx and Brooklyn.”

Well! The ACLU, among others, has requested Maine’s arrest records. But it is fairly easy to get the records from 2006. So click the link, go to page 8, and read that of the 5,110 drug arrests made that year in the state a full, wait for it, four percent were black.

So he was right, only with the races reversed! Most readers can stop now, reblog this, tweet it, move on to other things. For the rest:

To be fair (although, why?) the data are from a decade ago. There has been an explosion in heroin use since then. But somehow, well, while it is remotely possible that Mexican cartel agents are involved in wholesaling, it is unlikely in the extreme that they are involved in retail distribution. Moreover, as of 2013, the number of drug arrests in the state had fallen to 4,359. (Page 28.)

Now, Governor LePage is not up for re-election, but because it is happening in this strange environment with a fat crybaby running as the nominee of one of our major political parties, it seems relevant to tag this post with this.